We've talked about Plymouth now a number of times at Phoronix, which is Red Hat's RHGB replacement starting with Fedora 10 and uses newer Linux technologies like kernel mode-setting to drive this graphical boot screen. As we shared in our detailed analysis of Plymouth it also offers a number of plug-ins and APIs for creating some fairly unique visuals...

I think it's a great idea but I wonder when (if ever) will we start seeing suport for kernel mode-setting in drivers for older hardware.

It would suck if I can't have KMS without upgrading most of my systems; and if they remove the current bootsplash systems, it's basically back to text booting, which - again - kinda sucks.

11-28-2008, 08:00 AM

danjeel

Quote:

Originally Posted by [Knuckles]

I think it's a great idea but I wonder when (if ever) will we start seeing suport for kernel mode-setting in drivers for older hardware.

It would suck if I can't have KMS without upgrading most of my systems; and if they remove the current bootsplash systems, it's basically back to text booting, which - again - kinda sucks.

Is it impossible to have booth?, I bootet Fedora 10 on my old computer who uses a Nvidia 6200 card and i didnīt get a "text-boot", but it wasnīt very graphical neither. But still there was a progressbar..

11-28-2008, 11:51 AM

sundown

Looks like the guys at Fedora are doing the important stuff, while Ubuntu makes shits like Wubi.

11-28-2008, 11:59 AM

[Knuckles]

Quote:

Originally Posted by danjeel

Is it impossible to have booth?, I bootet Fedora 10 on my old computer who uses a Nvidia 6200 card and i didnīt get a "text-boot", but it wasnīt very graphical neither. But still there was a progressbar..

I think the way to go is KMS for everyone. But yeah fedora has a simple text-mode progress bar for those of us without KMS, but for people without KMS this is a regression: they had a nice boot, and now they don't.

11-28-2008, 01:18 PM

Zhick

Well, I guess a vesa-kms-driver wouldn't be too hard to do and would support pretty much all old graphic-cards, but of course you'd then have to use vesa in X as well.

11-28-2008, 03:57 PM

szczerb

Quote:

Originally Posted by danjeel

Is it impossible to have booth?, I bootet Fedora 10 on my old computer who uses a Nvidia 6200 card and i didnīt get a "text-boot", but it wasnīt very graphical neither. But still there was a progressbar..

GeForce 6200 is not old ;] The term old here applies to stuff like GeForce 2 which people are still using.

11-28-2008, 04:18 PM

BlackStar

Quote:

Originally Posted by sundown

Looks like the guys at Fedora are doing the important stuff, while Ubuntu makes shits like Wubi.

Wubi is great when you wish to use linux but cannot format / repartition the drive (as is the case with my university-provided laptop).

Frankly, Wubi is much more important than fancy startup graphics.

11-28-2008, 05:12 PM

sundown

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlackStar

Wubi is great when you wish to use linux but cannot format / repartition the drive (as is the case with my university-provided laptop).

Frankly, Wubi is much more important than fancy startup graphics.

Frankly, how is Wubi more important to people like me who run only Linux?

What you describe as "fancy startup graphics" is going to be a standard come 2.6.29.

11-28-2008, 05:25 PM

myxal

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlackStar

Wubi is great when you wish to use linux but cannot format / repartition the drive (as is the case with my university-provided laptop).

Frankly, Wubi is much more important than fancy startup graphics.

Granted, I find the uproar over text-mode boot quite silly. Who even boots these days? (suspend-to-ram FTW!) Even when you do boot, what difference does is make to you if the computer flashes the ubuntu logo for 50 seconds? If anyone should be upset it's Canonical over not displaying its brand whenever possible.

As for Wubi are you saying that linux installed into a file on an ntfs filesystem actually works? Especially on a laptop, does it cope with suspend/hibernate?

As for the inclusion of Plymouth - don't care either way, just use whatever is more stable/working.